


Birds of a Feather

by track_04



Category: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Case Fic, First Time, Geese, Hand Jobs, M/M, Necromancy, Post-Canon, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-23 17:36:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17687912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/pseuds/track_04
Summary: Sometimes all you need is a push in the right direction. And sometimes that push comes from an angry goose.





	Birds of a Feather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



> After seeing your love of Herded Together by an Angry Goose Soulmate AUs, I couldn't _not_ write one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it for you! 
> 
> Happy Chocolate Box! ♥

Nobody Owens couldn’t really be blamed for not noticing when a disgruntled-looking goose walked into Tesco and stopped in the aisle beside him. 

While Bod did occasionally get distracted by all the trappings of the living world—somehow still a little bit novel, even after well over a decade living as part of it—in this instance, his failure to notice the large bird standing a few feet from him wasn’t entirely his own fault. For a goose, it was unexpectedly polite, waiting until he’d finished placing a box of his preferred breakfast cereal into his basket before it stretched its neck upward and honked at him ominously.

Bod turned toward it and frowned ever-so-slightly. “Sorry, am I in your way?”

The goose frowned back, which was really a rather impressive feat with no eyebrows or mouth, and honked again.

Bod’s frown deepened. “Did you need me to get something down from the top shelf for you?”

The goose puffed out its chest and hissed.

Bod shifted his grip on his basket and watched the goose, face thoughtful. “I take it that means you have some sort of business with me personally, then?”

The goose gave Bod a look that reminded him a little bit of the one Silas use to give him after twenty minutes spent discussing why Bod shouldn’t just go around climbing into unfamiliar graves and trying to rouse their occupants to keep him company, even if he was especially bored or lonely and everyone he knew was busy. It was the look of someone who couldn’t decide if the person they were talking to was being stubborn or just a bit dense. If he hadn’t thought the goose might take offense, he might have smiled at the memory. 

Even if he was still of the opinion that it wouldn’t have hurt a few of the unknown occupants of the graveyard to pull themselves out of their long forgotten graves to spend an afternoon talking to a bored living boy.

“If you can let me finish my shopping, I'd be happy to discuss it with you at home.”

It was hard to tell if the goose looked more or less unimpressed by that suggestion, so Bod added as a quick enticement, “I’m making carbonara, if you like that sort of thing.”

The goose did not look particularly enticed, but it did let him finish his shopping with only a few impatient honks and one not-entirely vicious nip to his thigh when he lingered too long over the butcher’s case, trying to decide between his second-favorite bacon, which was on sale, and his favorite bacon, which was not. 

Which was fair enough, really. The choice should have been obvious.

“You’re right—no sense skimping,” he said, tossing a pack of his favorite into his basket and rubbing at his thigh.

The goose gave a quiet hiss, almost like a sigh, and followed him to the till.

\--

It took exactly eighteen minutes after stepping through the door into his flat for Bod to realise the problem with promising the goose they’d discuss things at home.

Goose, as it turned out, was not a language that Bod had ever been formally taught or had any interest in learning on his own; while the goose seemed capable of communicating its displeasure with Bod’s choice of pasta or the mess he made of his kitchen while cooking, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to participate in a conversation that involved more than the goose following him around his kitchen, glaring at him and honking angrily when he pulled yet another spoon out of the drawer, having somehow misplaced the first two.

The goose, at least, didn’t seem to have the same issues, as it clearly understood and disapproved of most of what he said. Luckily, Bod was no stranger to others’ disapproval, and he continued to make small talk as he moved around his kitchen, scattering dishes and utensils across the countertop.

“I don’t suppose you can write, can you?” Bod said as he portioned the pasta out into separate bowls, knowing that his mother would somehow know and never forgive him if he asked a guest to follow his usual habit of eating his dinner straight from the pot.

He ignored the judgmental stare the goose gave him, like it knew what he’d been thinking, and and brought the bowls into his living room, sitting one on the floor for the goose and resting the other atop his wobbly coffee table. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside it and said in a voice not unlike the one his mother had always used to greet unwanted guests, “Enjoy.”

The goose pushed the plate away from it with its beak and sat back, staring at him pointedly.

“Do you want some without sauce? Sorry, I probably should have asked and saved some back for you.

The goose narrowed its eyes.

“Or not,” Body said and, unable to think of what else to do, took a rather large bite of pasta, not seeing any reason to let it go cold. 

The goose seemed to disapprove of this, too, but it said nothing and sat there, watching as he worked his way through the contents of his bowl.

There were few things, as it turned out, more awkward than trying to eat your dinner while a large, displeased bird silently judged your every move. Even Bod, who’d never properly learned to feel awkward about many of the things that a living person should, couldn’t ignore the judgment in the bird’s eyes. He continued to eat and did his best to ignore it, using the time to consider the problem and try to find a way around it.

He still hadn’t found one when he pushed his bowl to the side and gave the goose an assessing look. He decided that honesty was the best tactic. 

“I don’t really speak Goose.”

The goose gave him a look that said that much was obvious and stood, crossing the few feet between them to stare him in the eye as it gave a low, purposeful honk.

“It’s nothing personal, really. We just didn’t get many geese where I grew up, so there was never really a need. Actually, I may have an idea&mdash” Bod reached for his pocket to pull out his phone, thinking maybe there was some sort of app that could do the translation for them. 

The goose nipped at his wrist until he pulled his hand out of his pocket again, and then lifted its head to hiss angrily in his face.

“There’s no need to be like that, you know. I haven’t really got any better ideas. Unless you know someone who’d be willing to translate.”

The goose hissed again and spread its wings in what Bod assumed was the goose version of looming over someone.

“Threatening me really isn’t going to make me understand— Bod started, then stopped as realization struck him. “—you know, I might know someone who could translate. I’m not sure if she’s completely fluent in Goose, but she probably knows a little.”

The goose lowered its wings, looking vaguely interested, but still annoyed.

“It’s a bit of a journey to get there, though. It might be best if we went in the morning.” Bod pulled his phone out of his pocket slowly, making eye contact with the goose beforehand to be sure it wouldn’t attack him, and lifted it between them so that they could both see the time. 

The goose craned its neck to peer at his phone and nodded reluctantly.

That decided, they fell into an uncertain silence. Bod gave the goose a thoughtful look. “I think I have an extra toothbrush, if you need that sort of thing.”

The goose sighed and stood, disappearing down the hallway and into Bod’s bedroom.

“...I’ll just take the sofa, then,” Bod called after it, then turned to his phone to check train times for the following day.

\--

The cemetery where Silas had buried Miss Lupescu stood on a hilltop, surrounded by twisting trees and wild blackberry bushes that spilled over a precariously leaning wooden fence. It was a bit haphazard, so far as graveyards went, like there had been little in the way of planning beyond the gravediggers casting their shovels into the soil in the first open spot that they found. The fact that an actual graveyard had formed around what had once been a collection of graves seemed more coincidence than design. The fence was an obvious late addition and it was hard to tell if it was there to keep others out of the graveyard, or to prevent the graveyard from spilling beyond its borders and wandering its way down the hill.

When Silas had first brought Bod here, after barely a year spent in the living world, he’d had trouble reconciling this wild, tangled mess with what he knew of Miss Lupescu while she’d been alive. Her flat near the graveyard had always been sparse and orderly, although well-lived in; there had been a quiet peace and vibrancy to it, a welcome familiarity that made each time Bod stepped into it feel a bit like coming home. 

He’d spent the greater part of his adult life moving from place to place, searching for and failing to find that same sense of belonging.

“You’re sure this is it?” Bod had asked, knowing full well that Silas wasn’t the type to forget where he’d buried one of his dearest friends. 

Beside him, Silas was silent for just a moment, a calm, solid presence in the dark. “Yes. I’m sure.”

Bod frowned, unable to make himself move from his place on the wrong side of the cemetery gate. “But why here?”

“Because it’s where she wanted to be. I never asked her reasons.” Silas stood beside Bod, hands folded carefully behind his back, and waited. “Perhaps you should ask her yourself.”

Bod had hesitated a moment longer, lingering in the silence beside Silas, and then reached forward to open the gate.

When Bod reached forward to open the gate this time, the space where Silas should have been beside him was now empty. The goose, not privy to Bod’s inner thoughts or reflection, brushed past him and waddled its way into the cemetary like it knew where it was going. Which it may well have, given that Miss Lupescu’s grave was both newer and better tended than the other graves, and not exactly difficult to spot.

Bod gave one last glance at the space where Silas wasn’t, then shut and latched the gate behind him, making his way to where the goose was sitting primly in the grass beside Miss Lupescu’s grave.

He slipped his bag from his shoulder and set it in a patch of unevenly cut grass, voice apologetic. “Sorry, this part might take a minute. It requires a bit more effort than it used to.”

The goose bobbed its head in what Bod assumed was a nod, looking slightly less cross than usual. 

He nodded back and knelt in the grass, pulling a small, handmade amulet from his bag. It was colder than such a thing should have been—and just as cold as he would have expected—and he turned it over in his palm, staring down at the bit of yellowing bone carved into the rough outline of a wolf. It reflected the morning sunlight back at him, seeming to return his notice.

“Good to see you again, too,” he said because his mother had taught him to always properly return a greeting, and then lifted the small wolf to his lips, where he whispered a short incantation and slipping the cord around his neck. The air grew colder, his breath escaping him in white puffs; beside him, the goose gave a soft, impatient hiss.

Bod ignored it and leaned forward and pressed both hands against the grave, pushing his fingertips down into the warm earth beneath them. He stayed like that, waiting, until he felt the air shift around him, the cold fading, leaving stillness and power behind it. He closed his eyes and breathed it in, letting himself enjoy once again belonging somewhere meant for the dead.

“Bod. I was not expecting you so soon.”

Bod opened his eyes and smiled up at Miss Lupescu’s shimmering form, the quirk of her lips belying the shortness of her words.

“Sorry to bother you, but it’s a bit of an emergency.”

“You know you are never a bother,” she said, arching an eyebrow as she looked from Bod to the goose. She bowed her head at it slightly in greeting. “I suppose your guest is part of this emergency?”

“Yes, this goose—er, I didn’t catch its name—”

The goose gave a series of short, irritated honks and Miss Lupescu pursed her lips. 

“He said he is called The Right Honorable Sir Albert Gosse, third son of the Earl of Warwickshire.”

Bod nodded. “Right, so the Right Honorable Sir Albert Gosse, third son of—”

The Right Honorable Sir Albert Gosse, third son of the Earl of Warwickshire cut him off with a curt honk.

“He said Sir Albert is fine,” Miss Lupescu said, the amusement in her voice just subtle enough to be easily denied.

“Okay. So, Sir Albert showed up at Tesco while I was doing my shopping, so I brought him home to see what he wanted from me. But then I remembered I don’t speak Goose and he doesn’t speak English, so I still have no idea what he wants.” Bod gave Miss Lupescu an imploring look. “I was hoping you might know enough Goose to translate. Or know of someone who could.”

“That does sound like an emergency.” Miss Lupescu adjusted her ghostly spectacles and took a seat in the grass in front of Sir Albert, her expression grave. “I’m a bit rusty, but we’ll see what we can do. I suppose you should start from the beginning.”

Sir Albert seemed to take her at her word, arching his neck and launching into a tale that lasted for what seemed an eternity when, like Bod, you had absolutely no idea what was being said. 

Bod gave up on trying to make sense of any of it about halfway through—it was surprisingly hard to decipher half of someone’s conversation with a goose—and started plucking at some of the longer strands of grass around him. He’d made a decently sized pile by the time the honking stopped and Miss Lupescu turned her attention back to him.

“You need to go where this goose takes you.”

“And then what?”

“He said you will find out when you get there.”

“That sounds a bit ominous.” Bod frowned. “I don’t suppose he mentioned where he was taking me, did he?”

Miss Lupescu turned to Sir Albert, who honked dismissively and leaned over to eat a bug wandering through the grass in front of him. 

“Coventry,” she translated, her expression thoughtful. “Interesting.”

“Why is that interesting?”

Miss Lupescu arched an eyebrow. “Because it’s where Silas lives.”

Bod looked to Sir Albert, remembering the promise Silas had made the day Bod left the graveyard. “Did Silas send you?”

Sir Albert honked and beat his wings against the ground.

“He says he works for no one but himself, but it’s important that you go with him. You’ll understand everything when you get there.”

Bod ignored the slight twinge of disappointment that Silas hadn’t been the one to send for him. “And that’s it? He didn’t tell you anything else in all that time you were talking?”

“Nothing relevant. He did a lot of talking about himself.” Sir Albert hissed at her and puffed up his feathers, looking very offended, and Miss Lupescu shrugged. “It was all very interesting, but it _was_ a lot of talking about yourself.”

Sir Albert narrowed his eyes at her and Bod leaned away as subtly as he could manage. 

Miss Lupescu waved a hand in the air dismissively and turned to Bod. “I’m sorry I can’t accompany you on this one. It sounds promising.” 

“I’m sorry you can’t, either.” Bod smiled back at her and stood, dusting the grass from his trouser legs. He pushed down the disappointment that he always felt every time a visit with Miss Lupescu was over—whether in this graveyard or another—and the slight, niggling sense of worry in the back of his mind, telling him that Silas might be in trouble. “So, where do we need to go to find Silas?”

Sir Albert ignored them both for a moment before he answered, apparently still offended by Miss Lupescu’s comments. 

“He will show you the way.” Miss Lupescu reached forward, laying one cold, airy hand on his shoulder, giving the goose a look that might have been a warning. Or it might have just been Miss Lupescu. “Until next time.”

“Until next time,” Bod said, smiling at her one last time before he slipped the amulet off his neck and dropped it into his bag. He was careful not to look back at the empty space where Miss Lupescu had been as he turned and walked toward the cemetery gate.

Sir Albert waddled along beside him, surprisingly silent for a goose of his size.

\--

One of the first things that Bod had learned about the world beyond the graveyard was that people would accept almost anything, no matter how strange, so long as you acted like whatever bizarre thing you were doing was completely and utterly normal. This included things like eating jam and sardine sandwiches, walking through London wearing only one shoe, and going under a turnstile instead of through it.

And now, it also seemed to include boarding a train to Coventry with a rather large, ill-tempered goose.

There’d been a brief moment as they were boarding the train, when a woman at the back had looked ready to call an attendant, but Bod and Sir Albert had strode past her with such certainty that she turned her attention to her phone instead, looking mildly confused by her own reaction. 

Bod was fairly sure he saw her sneaking a picture of them later in the trip, but it seemed a fair price to pay for making it to Coventry mostly free of hassle. After that, all that remained was to settle in for the duration of the trip and wait. He stared out the window, half-listening to music on his phone, and this was the same train that Silas had taken when he’d left the graveyard to return home all those years ago.

Beside him, Sir Albert flipped through a copy of _The Sun_ that a previous passenger had left behind. He ignored Bod’s existence until Bod looked at him suddenly and asked, “How do you know Silas?” 

Sir Albert raised both wings in the goose version of a shrug.

“Are you saying you don’t?”

Sir Albert tilted his head to one side and gave a quiet hiss, about as clear a “yes” as Bod supposed he was likely to get.

“Oh,” Bod said, unsure why that disappointed him quite so much. “Are you sure you can’t tell me why you’re taking me to him?”

His answer came in the form of a sarcastic honk and a pointed shaking of tail feathers.

“Right. I still don’t speak Goose. And you probably wouldn’t tell me even if I did.”

Sir Albert turned his attention back to the story about some sort of celebrity scandal that he’d been reading, more judgment in his silence than any possible answer he could have given.

Bod silently hoped that Silas had occasion, at some prior point in his life, to learn Goose.

\--

Silas’s house was not quite what Bod had imagined.

Which he had, quite extensively, on the sometimes long evenings when he found himself bored or lonely, finally attuned enough to the living world that dealing with the minutiae of everyday life no longer took up all of his time.

At first, he’d pictured a larger version of the chapel crypt, cold stone and dusty coffins laid out between damp stone walls. Gradually, as he’d seen and lived more outside the graveyard, the image in his mind had shifted, growing into something much bigger; that small, dark room gave birth to cavernous halls full of the ornate furnishings he’d seen in shop windows or in museums or on TV. At one point, he’d imagined a very colorful egyptian-themed motif; at another, an overly-ornate baroque monstrosity that also involved an odd amount of leather. His current imaginings were something like a more gothic version of the set of Downton Abbey.

The real thing was, of course, nothing like any of those. There was a part of Bod that wasn’t really surprised to find that Silas lived in a small townhouse with a modest lawn, or that the walkway that lead from the street to his front step was cracked concrete. Or that the azalea bushes on either side of that step were overgrown and wild, stretching halfway up the front windows like long, tangled fingers that clawed at the building in their struggle to reach the sky. They looked almost like a more sinister version of the bushes outside the Owens’ tomb.

He might have stopped to inspect them more closely, see if maybe they weren’t offshoots Silas had taken from the graveyard and planted here, if he weren’t so busy staring at the gaping hole where he assumed Silas’s front door had once been.

It took Bod a moment to make sense of what he was seeing and realize that the open doorway leading into Silas’s house and the chunks of wood scattered down the front steps and flung across the lawn were the work of something nefarious and not simply a design choice. 

Beside him, Sir Albert gave a startled honk, and that was the thing that made him realize that the quiet worry he’d had planted firmly in the back of his mind since they’d left Miss Lupescu may have been right, and Silas may actually have been in trouble.

He hurried forward at the thought, picking his way through the mess and up the front steps, pausing to run a finger over the jagged edge of a bit of wood clinging sadly to one of the hinges framing the dark, open doorway. 

“Silas?” he called out as he stepped inside, past the bits of door covering the threshold and into the living room, where a droning voice relayed recent world events from a radio in the corner. 

Everything else in the room was still tucked neatly into its place, no sign of a struggle save for the door; Bod might have been relieved by that, thinking this was all a friendly mishap instead of something nefarious, but there was no sign of Silas to be found, either.

Swallowing heavily, he moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Aside from the normal signs of life—an old newspaper left out on the table, a jacket hanging from a peg by the back door, an empty tea cup in the sink that made Bod wonder if Silas drank tea now, or if he even could—there was nothing to be found. 

Done with the ground floor, Bod moved on to the second, taking the stairs two at a time, calling out for Silas and getting nothing but silence in return. His search grew more frantic as he went from room to room, checking them all and circling back to check them again when his first pass revealed nothing.

He was standing in the middle of a bedroom that had to be for appearances, since Silas didn’t sleep in a bed, when Sir Albert started to call for him from downstairs, loud and alarmed and insistent. He left the neatly-made bed with its dark-colored duvet behind and descended the stairs to find an old man standing in the entryway, staring down at Sir Albert with a slightly bemused expression.

“You’re a bit shorter than I imagined,” the man said. 

Sir Albert stretched his neck upward until his eyes were at waist-level with the man and honked a warning.

Bod stepped forward with a frown. “Can we help you?”

The old man adjusted his glasses and squinted up at him. “Ah, yes. That’s more like it. I thought maybe you’d gotten yourself turned into a goose.”

“Not recently,” Bod said, remembering his manners and offering the old man his hand for a shake. “Nobody Owens. And that’s Sir Albert.”

Sir Albert made a displeased noise at the shortened name being offered to a stranger. Bod ignored him.

“Yes, I know who you are. Still shorter than Silas made you out to be.” 

“You know Silas?”

“Yes, of course. Been neighbors now for nearly eighty years. Moved here when I was a boy and my mother was always very insistent about getting to know all the neighbors. I couldn’t really care one way or the other myself, but it made her feel like a part of the neighborhood. By the time she passed and I inherited the house, the damage was done. Couldn’t really start not knowing each other at that point.”

Bod nodded and waved a hand to indicate the mess on the floor around them. “I don’t suppose you know what happened here, then?”

“Noisy, whatever it was. Woke me from a dead sleep, and not much does that these days.” He nudged a bit of broken door with the end of his cane. “Quite the shock, really. Silas has always been the type to keep to himself. Quiet, even with his unusual schedule. More people could stand to follow his lead.”

Sir Albert made an annoyed sound and it was all Bod could do not to follow suit. “Do you know where he is?”

“Afraid not. By the time I got here there was nothing but all this mess.” The old man pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it out with a trembling hand. “I did find this over there on the floor, next to the sofa. I thought about calling the police and giving it to them, but I suspect they’re not fully equipped for whatever sort of trouble Silas would get himself into.”

“Probably not.” Bod smoothed the paper out against his hand and stared down at a receipt for a bookshop, the name and address printed neatly at the top. “Is this Silas’s?”

“No idea. I was hoping you might find out for me, as I’m too old to be going on adventures. And the way Silas talked about you, I suspect it won’t take you long to find out what’s happened.”

Bod tried not to dwell too much on the swell of pride that comment gave him. “I hope so.”

The old man looked him over and hummed thoughtfully. “You might want to bring the goose with you. In case you need to intimidate anyone.”

“I don’t think I could stop him coming if I tried.”

Sir Albert honked in agreement.

“Right then.” The old man tapped the end of his cane against the floor and turned towards the door. “See that you bring him back in one piece. I wouldn’t want to have to adjust to new neighbors at my age.”

“I will,” Bod promised, because he didn’t want to consider the alternative. When the old man was out of sight, he turned his attention to Sir Albert, who looked about as put-out as a goose could manage. “I don’t suppose _you_ know where Silas is?”

Sir Albert glared.

“I guess we’re off to find a bookshop, then,” Bod said, and pulled out his phone to search for the fastest route to the address printed on the receipt.

\--

The bookstore was also not quite what Bod would have imagined. For a place linked, however loosely, to Silas’s disappearance and the destruction of what had probably been a reasonably solid front door, it was incredibly surprisingly cheerful. And also a little bit tacky.

The sign that greeted them out front read _A Novel Idea_ in two-foot tall block letters, white against a background so blue that Bod had to squint just to look at it. A cartoon worm wearing black-rimmed glasses and inexplicably holding a book peeked out from the middle of the O, its blank eyes watching Bod and Sir Albert as they stood in the middle of the pavement, staring at the entrance.

“I suppose this is it,” Bod said, not bothering to hide the note of disbelief in his voice.

Sir Albert honked in a way that said he shared Bod’s misgivings and, apparently not one to waste time, waddled up to the door. A woman with neatly-styled hair stopped on her way out to hold it open for him, her expression confused as Sir Albert honked a quick thank you and brushed past her.

“He said thanks,” Bod said, taking the door handle and holding it open for her in return.

“Polite, isn’t he?” She gave him a pinched-looking smile, clearly confused, and didn’t move from the doorway.

“Only to strangers.” Bod shrugged and slipped past her into the bookshop, only to find Sir Albert perched on the counter next to the till, giving a harrowed-looking shop clerk a vaguely threatening look.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re asking me? It might be best if you talk to our customer service department—”

Bod stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat, giving Sir Albert a warning look that he mostly ignored. He put a hand out on the counter between Sir Albert and the clerk, just to be on the safe side, and reached his other hand into his pocket to retrieve the receipt. “Sorry, my friend got a little ahead of himself. We were just wondering if you might know more about this?”

The clerk’s face had the carefully blank look of an underpaid retail employee expected to do the impossible as he reached out and took the receipt from Bod. He stared at it a bit longer than it should have taken to read it and said, “It appears to be a receipt for a copy of _Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century_ , sir.”

“Right. Can you tell us who bought it?”

“No? Looks like they paid in cash, and even if they didn’t, I don’t think I’m really allowed to give out private information to random people who wander in off the street. Even if they have got a scary-looking goose with them.” The clerk glanced sidelong at Sir Albert. “No offense, of course.”

Sir Albert narrowed his eyes and craned his neck closer. The clerk swallowed.

Bod nodded, trying not to look too disappointed. “I don’t suppose you’d know Silas, then?”

The clerk looked to the side, expression taking on an altogether new kind of blankness; it was, Bod knew through years of experience asking questions that people didn’t want to answer, the kind of blankness that came with lying. “I can’t be expected to know everyone who walks through the door. We’re very busy, you know.”

Sir Albert turned his head to look at the otherwise empty store and hissed quietly.

“He’s fairly memorable, so long as he didn’t want you to forget him. Dark hair, pale skin, sharp dresser. Tends to wear a lot of black, very...elegant, I guess you’d say? About this tall—” Bod lifted his hand to show Silas’s height and then stopped, reminding himself that now that he was fully grown, Silas was no longer quite the towering figure he’d once been. “—um, just a bit taller than me.”

“Can’t say he sounds familiar.”

Bod opened his mouth to elaborate, but Sir Albert cut him off, honking menacingly and leaning forward to pluck one of the keys off the till. He held it in his beak where the clerk was sure to see it and narrowed his eyes.

The clerk swallowed, looking from Bod to Sir Albert and back again. “You’re going to have to pay for that.”

Sir Albert dropped the key onto the countertop and hissed.

The clerk held his hands out in front of him in defeat. “Fine! He’s in here every other Tuesday. Orders a lot of books through us, usually just novels, some out-of-print stuff if we can get our hands on it, the occasional piece of nonfiction.”

Sir Albert took a step forward. Bod placed his hand back on the counter between him and the wide-eyed clerk.

“And when was he in here last?” 

“Tuesday before last. I expected him to turn up yesterday, but he never showed.” The clerk took his eyes off Sir Albert just long enough to give Bod a desperate look. “Can you please tell your goose not to peck my eyes out? I need them where they are.”

“I don’t think he could do that even if he wanted to. Not fully, anyway,” Bod said, frowning thoughtfully and ignoring Sir Albert’s indignant honk. “Did Silas act strange the last time he was here?”

“Not really? I doubt I would have noticed even if he had. We had this other bloke in here who was absolutely impossible, standing in the back of the shop staring at everyone, talking to the ivy we’ve got in the front window there, reading over people’s shoulders. Just being generally unsettling. My manager finally had to tell him to buy something or get out. Seemed rather put-out about the whole thing, but he still bought a book—” The clerk stopped and looked at the receipt he still had clutched in his hand. “Come to think of it, he bought this book. I remember thinking it was the least creepy thing about him.”

“You didn’t happen to get his name, did you?”

“No.” The clerk hesitated for a moment, then continued in a rush, “But my manager wrote down his number plate, just in case he ever came back and caused problems.”

Bod shared a look with Sir Albert. “Could we have it?”

“If you promise not to tell my manager.”

“We won’t,” Bod promised. “Thank you.”

“If you’re a friend of Silas’s, you can’t be all that bad.” The clerk shrugged and gave Sir Albert a wary look. “Besides, I’d rather deal with your goose than that guy again. At least your goose didn’t wander through all the aisles, picking up books and putting them back in places they didn’t belong. Took ages to get the shelves back in order after he left.”

Sir Albert’s eyes narrowed at the use of “your goose”, and Bod leaned forward, further blocking his access to the clerk. “If you could get that for us so we can be on our way?”

“Sure,” the clerk said and backed away slowly, not turning his back to them until he was nearly to the door that lead to their back room, which he shut and locked firmly behind him.

“That went better than expected,” Bod said. 

Sir Albert looked vaguely annoyed, but he didn’t disagree.

\--

Despite having spent well over a decade in the living world, living the life of a semi-normal person, there were still things that baffled Bod. Which was the proper side of the stairs to walk on. The existence of unsweetened breakfast cereals. People who enjoyed making small talk in the supermarket queue.

And now, the intricacies of the DVLA.

Bod stared at the bored-looking woman seated behind the counter, the bright yellow and green of her blouse almost shocking against the grey and white backdrop of the office. She stared back at him, unblinking. 

“And that’s why I need the name of this person who hit my car. If you don’t mind. It’s a bit of an emergency.” 

“Fill this out and mail it to the address listed at the top. Be sure to include all the relevant documentation and a cheque or postal order that covers the relevant fees.” She slapped a piece of paper in front of him, expression never changing. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

Bod offered the woman what he hoped passed for a pleasant smile.“Actually, I was hoping I could get this information today? I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“You and everyone else,” the woman said, still not blinking. “Mail that in. You’ll have a reply in ten to fourteen business days.”

“Is there any way I can get it a bit faster?”

“Send it express.”

Bod contemplated going to collect Sir Albert from outside to see if intimidation tactics would work a second time, but this woman looked more battle-hardened than the clerk at the bookstore had been. She’d probably seen much scarier things than an ill-tempered goose.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you need anything else, or can I move on to the next person in the queue?”

Bod glanced back at the people queued up behind him, their expressions ranging from bored to annoyed to actively angry. He was about to agree and go outside, where he could try to formulate a new strategy, when he spotted Sir Albert marching up the queue toward him, beak set in a firm line and a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

“I thought you said you were going to wait outside?”

Sir Albert narrowed his eyes and honked loudly enough that a tired-looking man a few windows over leaned forward to shush him.

“It’s a very long queue,” Bod pointed out, able to guess at Sir Albert’s meaning, even if he still couldn’t understand the words. He turned back to the woman at the window to apologize, only to be greeted by a smile bright enough to match her blouse.

“Is that Bertie I hear?”

Bod stared at her. “Is Bertie a goose named Sir Albert who’s always in a bad temper?” 

“All that, and he drinks like a fish,” she said, leaning forward against the counter. “Bertie, you old tosser, get up here and talk to me.”

Bod glanced down at Sir Albert, mouthing, _Bertie_?

Sir Albert ignored him and leapt up onto the counter with a flap of his wings, sending the people standing behind them stumbling backwards in a semi-panic. He dipped his head at the woman and honked at her more cheerfully than Bod would have previously thought him capable.

She leaned forward and kissed the air on either side of his beak. “I can’t believe you’ve stayed away so long! What have you been up to? Job’s still the same, I suppose.”

Sir Albert gave a tiny flutter of his wings and launched into a lengthy retelling of something that Bod still couldn’t understand, but assumed involved at least some of their current adventure. The woman ooh-ed and ahh-ed and nodded along, leaning forward slightly each time Sir Albert paused for dramatic effect. 

During one particularly lengthy pause, she glanced over at Bod, her gaze assessing. “He looks about average to me, really. A bit skinny, maybe. In need of a good haircut.”

Sir Albert hissed dismissively and continued his tale.

Now that the immediate danger of an angry goose attack had passed, the people behind them started to shift and mumble impatiently. The woman behind the counter and Sir Albert soundly ignored them, too caught up in their conversation, which left Bod on the receiving end of a room full of glares. He did his best to project his usual level of confidence, but that tactic didn’t seem to work quite so well when the social faux pas involved was preventing people from finishing a task that they didn’t really want to do in the first place.

Bod wished, not for the first time, that he still had the ability to fade.

Finally, after an interminable amount of time, Sir Albert finished his tale with a dramatic flapping of his wings.

“That does sound like a pickle you’re in.” The woman pursed her lips and glanced over first one shoulder, then the other. She motioned them both closer and whispered, “I really shouldn’t do this, but I can get you that name if you really need it.”

Sir Albert hissed conspiratorially, and the woman tapped the side of her nose and winked.

“Our little secret. Besides, it’s not like you haven’t stuck your neck out for me before, eh, Bertie?”

Sir Albert and the woman looked at each other and laughed. 

“Back in a moment,” she said, placing a sign that read **THIS WINDOW CLOSED** on the counter with a loud clack before she rose and walked into the back, still chuckling to herself.

Bod gave Sir Albert a puzzled look. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”

Sir Albert dipped his head to preen his feathers, looking smug, and pretended not to hear.

\--

Bod left the DVLA with a sheet of paper that would hopefully lead them to Silas and an invitation from the woman—Sheila, she’d told him, still happily ignoring the ever-increasing hostility of the people in the queue behind them—to pop round to hers next time he was in the area. He’d thanked her and declined to comment on her assurances that he was in good hands with “Bertie”, then politely asked if she knew of a hotel where they could stay for the evening, as it was already growing dark and the house they were looking for was a good three hours away by train.

Which left Bod where he was now, in a middling hotel room in Coventry, watching Sir Albert pick gingerly at an overpriced salad from room service. A re-run of QI played on the television in the background, and occasionally Sir Albert paused his eating long enough to honk an answer.

Bod sat on the bed and stared down at the piece of paper in his hand, trying not to let himself wonder if Silas was alright. It was hard to imagine he wouldn’t be, even if his mind was trying to convince him that it was a distinct (perhaps even the likeliest) possibility; there were few things that remained constant, so far as Bod was concerned, but Silas being somewhere in the world was one of them. 

Even if, for a long time now, that somewhere hadn’t been with Bod.

“Mortimer Everett-Smith,” Bod read the name from the paper with a frown. “Mortimer seems a bit on the nose for someone interested in necromancy, doesn’t it?”

Sir Albert turned to stare at him, crunching a crouton loudly between his beak.

“I never said my name wasn’t on the nose, too,” Bod said in answer to the implied comment and turned to set the paper on the nightstand beside his bed. “What do you think he wants with Silas? He’s not even technically dead. Or alive, for that matter. I wouldn’t think necromancy would work on him.”

Sir Albert gave him a knowing look and honked in a way that said he knew exactly what Mortimer Everett-Smith had planned for Silas. 

“This would all be much easier if I understood Goose.” Bod sighed. “I’m going to trust that you know what we’re doing.”

The look Sir Albert gave him said he couldn’t believe that was even in question. 

“You know what the worst part of all this is?”

Sir Albert looked at him questioningly.

“I’ve been putting off asking Silas to show me his house for years because it seemed like the last thing he had left to show me, and after that there wouldn’t be any reason to keep me around.” Laughter from the TV filled the room, and Bod stared down at his hands. “I wish I’d gone anyway.”

There was a quiet rustle of feathers as Sir Albert shifted on the bed, pressing one of his wings against Bod’s palm briefly in the goose equivalent of giving someone’s hand a quick squeeze.

Bod looked up at him and smiled. He would have reached out and petted his wing in return, but he didn’t think they’d quite reached that stage of friendship—or whatever this was—yet. So, instead he just said, “Thanks.”

Sir Albert hissed something that Bod still couldn’t understand and turned his attention back to his salad and Stephen Fry.

\--

Bod looked up from the print off with Mortimer Everett-Smith’s address to see an incredibly normal-looking street around them. It didn’t look much like the type of neighborhood where a necromancer would choose to spend his time, but Bod hadn’t really spent enough time around necromancers to say that with any sort of authority.

“It should be just up ahead.” He lowered the paper and looked down at Sir Albert, who waddled determinedly beside him. “Do you think he has a mortgage? Seems a bit odd for a necromancer.”

Sir Albert gave him a look and honked sarcastically.

“Point taken. It’s still a little weird, though.” Bod glanced over at the house they were passing to check the number, and instead saw nothing but twisting, flowering vines. It looked a bit like the end-stage of the bushes outside Silas’s house, branches and vines that stretched upwards until they covered the front windows entirely and wound their way up onto the roof; the result looked more like a large, house-shaped plant than a home overrun with foliage. 

He wasn’t sure if it was the angle or a trick of the light, but some of the vines seemed to move while he watched, stretching and growing to cover the last few visible slivers of the house’s battered siding. The only house number visible was the bottom of a three peeking out from behind a patch of ivy, but Bod felt fairly confident they’d found the right place. 

“I think we can assume this is it.”

Sir Albert made a sound of agreement and waddled up to the gate, giving it an irritated peck as he waited for Bod to reach around and open the latch to let them both inside.

Bod had no idea what he expected when he rang the doorbell—miraculously still mostly free of foliage—but the youngish man in the three-piece suit with a carefully groomed moustache who answered the door would not have been high on his list.

The man looked from Bod to Sir Albert and sighed. “I suppose you’re here about Mort.”

“Yes?”

“Well, he’s not here,” the man said, and shut the door in their face. 

Bod blinked, looking from the door to Sir Albert, and then lifted a hand to knock.

The man jerked the door open, his perfect moustache unable to hide his annoyance. “I said he’s not here.”

“I know, but I really need to find him.”

“You and half the country, judging by the number of people who turn up here looking for him. Now, if you don’t mind, I have wisteria filling my living room and I really need to attend to it.” The man took a step back and tried to slam the door in their faces once again.

Bod caught it and held it open. “I think he’s taken my friend.”

“Really? You’re not just saying that because he owes you money?”

“Afraid not,” Bod said, and Sir Albert honked a quiet confirmation beside him.

The man sighed, his moustache drooping in defeat. “This would have been much easier if he’d owed you money.”

“Sorry,” Bod said, although he wasn’t really.

“Not your fault. I knew what I was getting myself into when I let him move in with me.” One of the vines crept its way forward and started to twine its way around the man’s ankle; he glared and shook it off. “Well, some of it, anyway.”

“If you can just tell us where he is, we can be on our way. I’d like to find him before he does something awful to my friend.”

The man stared at Bod for a moment, looking a bit ashamed, and nodded. “Right, sorry. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect he might be at the cottage.”

“And where is that.”

“The middle of bloody nowhere.” The man held out his hand. “Probably easiest if I pin it on your phone. I can get you fairly close that way.”

Bod handed the man his phone, and when he handed it back to him, he could see a map with two dots on the screen, one indicating the tiny vine-covered house, and the other the cottage where Mortimer Everett-Smith had taken Silas.

“Thank you,” Bod said. Sir Albert, who’d been surprisingly silent, honked a quiet thanks of his own.

“It’s the least I can do. I hope your friend’s all right.”

“Me, too.” 

The man watched as a vine snaked its way past him, pushing through the open front door and into the interior of the house, and sighed. “Now, if you don’t mind, I should probably take care of this before it gets worse.”

\--

The house where Mortimer Everett-Smith was keeping Silas was a small building set back from the road, edged up against a dark stretch of untouched woodland.

It looked like it had been a respectable home at one time, a well-tended cottage where someone had lived out a humble life, close to nature and far from the hustle and bustle of city life. But at some point it had changed from a respectable home into a confusing hodge podge, as one or more of the residents decided to tack on a sideroom here and a porch there, adding extra windows and doors where they clearly didn’t belong. The end result was a confusing tangle of a building where a welcoming home had once been, its many angles growing sharper the longer you stared at them.

And, as if that wasn’t quite dramatic enough, the entire house was covered in a mass of vines even more impressive than the one that Mortimer Everett-Smith’s friend was currently cleaning out of his living room. 

Someone less versed in the strangeness of the world might have looked at the vines on that other house and mistaken them for neglect or an appreciation of foliage gone terribly awry. That could not be said about the house in front of them, the vines wrapped around it obvious enough in their wrongness that even the most skeptical or oblivious person would have been hard pressed to explain it away.

They moved restlessly as Bod watched them, slithering over and around one another, working their way through the cracks in the building’s foundation and weaving their way through the garden gate, tightening slowly until the wood groaned in protest. They were colored a deep red, more like blood vessels than vines, an impression made worse by the way they pulsed, slow and steady in the early afternoon light.

Bod looked to Sir Albert hunched in the grass beside him, peering at the house through a gap in the bush that they were hiding behind. “We need to figure out where Silas is so we can get him out as soon as it’s dark. We probably shouldn’t leave him in there any longer than necessary.”

Sir Albert nodded gravely and motioned at a still-visible window on the second story of the house with his beak. The vines working their way around the frame and into the opening hadn’t managed to block it off completely, leaving just enough room for a very thin man. Or a very large goose.

Bod nodded and pointed to a similarly clear cellar window at ground level. “I’ll start at the bottom and you start at the top?”

Sir Albert honked quietly in agreement, his expression determined.

“Alright then,” Bod said, and edged his way out of their hiding spot, pausing to look around before he moved toward the house as quickly and quietly as he could. Sir Albert kept pace behind him, surprisingly quick for a bird of his size. 

They reached the shadows beside the house without incident and Bod stopped, swallowing heavily as he tilted his head back to glance up at the open window. The vines seemed not to have noticed them, too intent on choking the life out of the building to pay attention to either a serious young man or an ill-tempered goose. 

Bod still made sure to lean in close to Sir Albert and pitch his voice low when he spoke, afraid of doing anything that might draw the vines’ attention. “Do you need me to toss you up there or can you make it on your own?”

Sir Albert gave him a slightly offended look and backed a few feet away from Bod, turning his head this way and that, lifting one wing slightly and poking the tip of his tongue out of his beak as though he were testing the air. Satisfied, he nodded sharply, spread his wings, and ran, launching himself into the air.

It was a short enough distance that it only took a few flaps of his wings before he made it to the window, shoving the front half of his body through it while the back half struggled to balance on the window sill. There was a brief moment where Bod was afraid that he might be trapped and wondered how, exactly, they’d manage to fix it if he were, but his feet found purchase and he pushed the rest of himself forward, disappearing inside.

The vines around the window pulsed faintly in annoyance, but otherwise seemed to ignore him. 

Bod breathed a sigh of relief and moved toward the cellar window, kneeling beside it and starting to squeeze himself inside. It was a longer process than he thought it would be, the vines reacting more to Bod than they had to Sir Albert, pulsing wildly and doing their best to clutch at his hair and clothing on the way through. 

He finally managed to wriggle his way past them and land gracelessly on the dirt floor below. He sat where he was for a moment, attempting to catch his breath, and looked around him.

The room he was in was small and dark, empty save for himself and the vines trailing in through the window, spread outward far enough to cover most of the walls and ceiling. They gave off a dull glow each time they pulsed, filling the room with red light. It felt a bit like being trapped inside a still-beating heart.

Bod frowned at the thought and stood, dusting the back of his trousers off as he started for the door. He opened it, shaking off a vine that grabbed for his wrist, and stepped through into the main cellar. 

And right into the back of a dark, unfamiliar form.

Bod turned automatically to run, trying to put the door between himself and the figure—a man, he thought, although it was hard to tell in the dark—but the vines reached out before he could manage it, twining themselves around his wrists and ankles and pinning him in place.

The figure made a soft sound of surprise and leaned forward to get a better look at him. “Oh, good. You’re finally here.”

“What?” Bod said, managing to snap the vine holding one of his arms before three more rushed in to take its place.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” the figure said, then snapped his fingers. “I don’t have time to answer any questions just yet.”

The pulsing of the vines quickened, and Bod felt something cold and dry start to wind its way around his neck. He jerked his head, trying to pull away, but it held him fast, tightening slowly until he could no longer breathe. It held him like that for what seemed an eternity, trapped and helpless to do anything save stare at the shadows surrounding that figure, untouched by the vines’ dull red glow. 

His vision started to fade at the edges and his last thought before it went completely dark was that he would have liked to see Silas one last time.

\--

Silas was slightly worse for the wear when Bod found him. Which happened at the same moment that Bod regained consciousness and opened his eyes to find himself lying on the floor in a large, empty room with Silas hovering over him.

In Silas terms, being worse for the wear meant that there was a small tear in his jacket along one of the elbows and a smudge of dirt across one of his cheeks. There may have been a few stray hairs out of place, too, but it was hard to tell in the light provided by the bare bulb hanging in the middle of the room, already half-covered in creeping red vines.

Bod meant to say that he was glad he’d found him, that he’d been worried he wouldn’t be alright. That he hoped Silas hadn’t been waiting too long for him. 

What he actually said, after coughing a few times to clear the sandpaper from his throat, was, “Your house was different than I expected.”

Silas looked relieved. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light or his recent oxygen deprivation. “And what did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Something like Downton Abbey, but with more coffins.” Bod coughed again and started to sit up, mostly managing it before Silas reached out to steady him. “I only really had the chapel from the graveyard to go on. I had to fill in the rest.”

Silas tightened his grip on Bod’s arms and not-quite smiled. “I probably shouldn’t say this, given the circumstances, but it’s always nice to see you, Bod.” 

“You, too.” Bod not-quite smiled back at him. “I think I may have gone about rescuing you in the wrong way.”

“That does seem to be the case.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” Bod said, a silent part of him changing that _we_ to _you_. It was hard to imagine Silas being trapped anywhere for long, despite that being the reason Bod had come here in the first place; even thoughts of the shadowy figure and those great, pulsing vines felt more distant, less terrible with Silas seated beside him. “Or Sir Albert will.”

“Sir Albert?”

“Yes, he’s a goose I met in Tesco. Or he found me in Tesco, and then we came looking for you.”

Silas’s voice was thoughtful. “This wouldn’t happen to be the Sir Albert Gosse from Warwickshire, would it?”

“Yes, actually.” Bod frowned. “He told me he didn’t know you.”

“Not in the strictest sense, no. But I’m familiar with his work.” Silas lifted one perfect eyebrow, looking about as surprised as he ever managed. “Interesting.”

“And why is it interesting?”

“Because he’s a matchmaker,” Silas said. After a minute of Bod staring at him in confusion, he added, “He brings soulmates together. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been on the receiving end of his services, as it were.”

Bod ignored the much more pressing issues with that statement in favor of asking the first question that popped into his head. “Shouldn’t someone who brings soulmates together be a bit more cheerful?” 

“I imagine his line of work is not as easy as you might think.” Silas turned his head to survey the room around them. “As our present circumstances show.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“We should probably have a discussion about what him being here means when our situation is slightly less dire,” Silas said, keeping his gaze trained on Bod. “How are you feeling?”

Bod shrugged, still trying not to think too hard about the implications. “Pretty awful, actually. Nehemiah always used to make passing out sound much more poetic.”

“I’m fairly sure passing out one too many times contributed to his untimely demise,” Silas said, reaching up to brush Bod’s too-long hair out of the way so he could get a look at his neck. “Which I don’t think you’re in any danger of at the moment. Not as a result of this, anyway.”

“What on earth do vines have to do with necromancy, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Silas said. “But I suspect they might function as his familiar, or something similar. Which is unusual, to say the least.”

Bod squinted at Silas through the dark. “And what does he want with you?”

“He seems to think I'm the key to a spell for eternal life.”

“Really?”

Silas didn't shrug, but his expression made Bod think that part of him might want to. “It's not an entirely unheard of belief. Others have tried it in the past, and I’m sure there will be those who try it again in the future.”

“But why would anyone even want that?”

“Men want many things that are neither desirable nor wise. Especially where death is concerned.” Silas reached out and, in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture, straightened the collar of Bod's shirt. “I would think that you, of all people, would know that.”

“I know that’s what a lot of people want. I just can’t imagine being that afraid of death.”

Silas dropped his hand and nodded. “No, I don’t imagine you would.”

“I won’t let him, you know.” 

“I know,” Silas said in a tone of voice that Bod hadn’t even known he’d missed.

Bod had the sudden urge to hug him, but Silas still wasn’t the kind of person you hugged, so he leaned a little bit closer instead. “Now all we need is to find a way out of here. Or hope that Sir Albert finds one for us.”

Silas looked around them, surveying the vines spilling in from beneath the door and covering the windows, leaving them no clear exits. “That may take some time.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” Bod said and believed it.

\--

When viewed in a fully lit room, away from the dark cellar and its pulsing vines, Mortimer Everett-Smith was a small, unassuming man. He was average in a way that meant you’d nearly forgotten what he’d looked like before you even finished looking at him, the type of person that you were unlikely to notice at all, let alone give a second look. Even now, as he loomed over them with a sinister gleam in his eyes and a curved black knife clutched in one hand, there was a part of Bod that was ready to forget him.

“I see you’re both awake. Good.”

Bod didn’t remember falling asleep in the first place, but he was sure he must have, given he was waking up. He frowned and tried to sit up, only to find himself pinned against something too high up to be the floor. He turned his head and saw the familiar, pulsing vines wrapped around his wrist and, beyond that, a table where Silas was laid out in a similar fashion. 

Silas turned his head, meeting Bod’s eyes briefly. “I’d think anything you might have planned would be easier if we weren’t.”

“We’d be less likely to fight back,” Bod agreed.

Mortimer Everett-Smith paused, the gleam in his eye flickering uncertainly. “Were you planning on fighting back?”

Silas gave him a grave look. “Of course.”

Bod’s expression was slightly more incredulous. “Did you think we wouldn’t?”

“I never considered it.” Mortimer Everett-Smith sniffed. “Since I wasn’t planning to give you the opportunity.”

“But if you wanted us awake, you had to think it might be a possibility—”

“Yes, but it won’t,” he cut them off, waving his hand dismissively in front of him. “So, this is exactly what I want. Both of you here and awake and able to bear witness to my triumph.” He glanced thoughtfully at Silas. “Well, maybe not you, since you’ll almost certainly die in the process. Which makes it a lucky thing that your friend came looking for you, doesn’t it?”

“We have very different ideas of what that word means.”

“You know what they say—one man’s luck is another’s misfortune.” Mortimer Everett-Smith moved to stand over Bod, the knife reflecting the red glow of the vines as he lifted it. He waved it back and forth in the air above Bod’s chest, tracing its movements with an almost manic gleam in his eyes. “Well, isn’t that interesting. Death is just drawn to you, isn’t it?”

“Is it? That’s odd.” Bod winced as the vines tightened around his wrists, echoing an angry hiss from Mortimer Everett-Smith.

“Don’t get cute. I can kill you just as easily as I can keep you around. The magic might even like it if I did—”

“I don’t believe I recognize this ritual.” Silas’s voice was calm as it cut through whatever else Everett-Smith might have said. 

Bod watched as Mortimer Everett-Smith turned toward it, knife held out in front of him as he smiled the smile of someone who knew that he was terribly clever.

“That’s because it’s something I developed myself. Based loosely on some of the pre-existing rituals and using a variety of magical theory, of course.” The smugness in his voice grew with every word and the vines echoed it, pulsing faster against Bod’s wrists. “You should both feel honored. You’re about to be the first to ever take part in or witness it.”

“And what is it called?” Bod asked, the vines around his wrists tightening as Everett-Smith turned his attention back to him.

“I’m still working on that part,” he said with the feigned nonchalance of someone who cared very much about what they were saying and did not want anyone else to know it. “It’s the hardest part of practicing dark magic, really—trying to think of spell names that strike the right balance between evocative and properly descriptive without being overly cliche.”

From the shadows in the corner of the room, there was a rustle of feathers, so faint that Bod could barely hear it over the rush of his pulse in his ears. Bod very carefully didn’t look toward it, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Mortimer Everett-Smith. “I think simple is usually the way to go. You have a vampire, a human, and a goose. You should be able to do something with that, shouldn’t you?”

“I believe you mean a knife,” Everett-Smith said, laughing dismissively. “Why on earth would I have a goose?”

There was another rustle of feathers in the dark and Bod smiled. “I’ve heard they’re good at bringing people together.”

“And why would I need that? I already have both of you here, and I don’t even need you, really. You’re just a spare.”

“I guess you’re right,” Bod said, smile widening as he caught a glimpse of feathers in the dark. “My mistake, then.”

Whatever Mortimer Everett-Smith might have said to that was lost to history, drowned out by a loud, echoing honk as Sir Albert launched himself from the shadows, wings outstretched, and landed on squarely on his head. He cried out and stumbled forward, raising his arms to shield his face as Sir Albert’s beak cut through the air, going straight for his eyes.

Bod felt the vines start to loosen around his wrists as Mortimer Everett-Smith’s attention focused fully on defending himself from Sir Albert’s wrath, and he tugged at them, struggling to pull himself free. He’d nearly managed one wrist when Everett-Smith suddenly remembered he was holding a knife and lifted it to strike Sir Albert.

“Look out!” Bod called out, watching helplessly as the knife sliced through the air.

Sir Albert lifted his head and leapt back, narrowing avoiding the blow. He planted his feet firmly on the floor and reared back, wings outstretched and eyes flashing.  
Mortimer Everett-Smith shifted his grip on the knife and bared his teeth. They flashed red in the light, and he stared Sir Albert down, looking utterly inhuman. “Like I’d let my plans be ruined by a _bird_.” 

Sir Albert flapped his wings and honked in challenge. 

Mortimer Everett-Smith answered the challenge with a laugh and reared back, preparing to charge. He managed a half-step before a pale hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed his wrist, twisting it until he cried out and dropped the knife to the floor with a loud clatter.

“That’s quite enough,” Silas said, an edge of impatience cracking the usual calm of his voice. 

“Hardly,” Everett-Smith spat back, going still in Silas’s grip and chanting something low and guttural at the shadows. The glow from the vines grew to a bright, nearly blinding red and they started to writhe, slithering across the room with frightening speed and winding their way around Sir Albert and Silas.

Bod felt the vines around his wrists and ankles shudder uncertainly and he yanked, pulling himself free and rolling off the edge of the table to crouch on the floor. He could hear Sir Albert’s offended hiss and Silas’s soft gasp as the vines wrapped around them, covering them completely.

Mortimer Everett-Smith pushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled at the vine-covered form of Sir Albert. “I still need him. You, on the other hand—”

Next to Bod’s foot, the knife flashed red; he picked it up and threw himself forward, driving it into the center of the vines tangled at Mortimer Everett-Smith’s feet. They resisted at first, but Bod leaned forward, putting his full weight on the knife and driving the blade into the floor below.

The scream that filled the room came from all directions at once, the vines echoing their master’s outraged cry. Bod could feel the vines beneath his hands tremble wildly, their ends grasping at this fingers in a futile attempt to dislodge the knife, but it was already too late; something black and viscous spilled from the cut and the color of those wounded vines started to fade, leaving a sticky black husk behind.

As Bod watched, the darkness grew, spreading its way outward into uninjured vines, pushing its way toward the corners of the room. The screams quieted as one by one the vines grew dark, more distant screams taking their place as the darkness worked its way into other parts of the house and, finally, outside. 

When the last scream faded, Mortimer Everett-Smith went silent and collapsed into a heap on the floor.

For a brief moment, everything was still and silent and Bod sat on the floor, hand still wrapped around the knife. Bod watched the still form of Mortimer Everett-Smith and, when he was sure he wouldn’t rise again, released his grip on the knife and started to tug at the blackended vines still wrapped around Silas and Sir Albert; they crumbled to dust beneath his fingertips, making short work of his rescue efforts and leaving piles of soot to cover the floor beneath their feet.

Sir Albert shook his beak angrily as he pulled himself free. Around them, the house gave a great, heaving groan, and flapped his wings in alarm.

“I agree,” Silas said, resting a hand on Bod’s arm and ushering him toward the door. “That’s most certainly an indication that we should leave.”

And with that, they hurried out of the house, leaving what was left of Mortimer Everett-Smith and his schemes behind them.

\--

On second viewing, Silas’s house still wasn’t what Bod would have imagined.

The practical, boring furniture and the color of the walls were still wrong, not dark or theatrical or any of the things that they should have been. The rooms were still too small, not the grand, sweeping rooms that would have seemed more capable of holding someone like Silas. His neighbor was still a far-too-normal looking old man who smiled from his front window and waved at the three of them as they made their way up the front walk to the place where Silas’s front door wasn’t. 

And none of that mattered, because it was still the place where Silas lived, which was really all Bod needed it to be.

Bod stopped just inside the doorway, wondering if he should take off his shoes; Silas didn’t seem the type to demand it of guests, especially while his floor was still covered in chunks of wood, but Bod didn’t actually know what Silas was like when he was here and not in the graveyard. The Silas that Bod knew was the one who slept in an abandoned chapel and lingered too long in the shadows, looking mysterious and wise. This Silas had a welcome mat laid out across his entryway and a coat rack by his front door—it didn’t seem completely out of order that he might care about the state of his carpet.

Sir Albert, sharing none of Bod’s reservations, honked in annoyance and pushed past him into the living room, where he planted himself firmly on the sofa.

“Please, make yourself at home,” Silas said, sounding faintly amused, and motioned Bod further inside with a nod of his head. “My apologies for the mess. I’m afraid any tidying will have to wait until tomorrow evening.”

Bod left his shoes on. “I can call someone about the door tomorrow.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Silas folded his hands behind his back and peering around at the scattered remains of his door. “It appears Sir Albert has already laid claim to the sofa, but you’re welcome to sleep in your room tonight. I can change the sheets, if you’d like a fresh set.”

Bod frowned, unsure which part of that to address first. He decided to go with the most obvious. “I don’t have a room here.” 

“Of course you do. You’ve had one for years.”

Bod stared at him. “You mean the one upstairs? That’s mine?”

“Yes. You’ve seen it?”

“Yes, but I didn’t really get a good look at it,” he said, glancing toward the stairs. “I was busy looking for you.”

Silas made a thoughtful sound. “I suppose you would have been. Would you like a proper tour?”

“Now?”

“I don’t see why not,” Silas said, holding out one long-fingered hand, gesturing for Bod to take the lead.

From the sofa, Sir Albert honked in warning, and Bod, having mostly learned his lesson, wasted no time in climbing the stairs.

\--

The upstairs bedroom could be described, at best, as slightly gloomy. The dark wood of the furniture—older and more expensive than what seemed to be scattered throughout the rest of the house, a fact which Bod tried not to give too much consideration—combined with the dark blue of the walls and the dull black of the night sky outside the window made the space look small in a way that was more smothering than cozy. The bedspread was generic-looking, if obviously nicely made, and the pillows looked soft and sturdy and useful.

For most people, it might have been disappointing, but Bod looked at the dark walls and the non-descript bedspread and the bookshelf tucked into one corner, full to bursting with books, and thought it might be perfect.

He tucked his hands into his pockets and walked slowly around the room, pausing occasionally to get a better look at something. 

The photographs decorating the walls were the obvious work of an amateur, lighting and composition that spoke of someone with boundless enthusiasm who lacked the experience to properly transfer that into a still image. Bod stopped next to one showing a wall of post boxes, battered and dirty and half of them without names. A white tag hung above the box in the center, _N. Owens_ written above it in a barely legible scrawl. 

“I never really expected you to frame all of these when I sent them.”

“You can change them if you like. I just thought since this was your room, you might like to have them here.” 

“I like having them here.” Bod turned to find Silas standing behind him, not quite too close.

Silas glanced at a picture of a tiny cafe in Bristol that Bod had worked in one summer, slightly off center and out of focus, and almost smiled. “I may have liked having them here, too.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come for a visit.”

“You came exactly when you were meant to,” Silas said, his voice fond. “I don’t want you to ever regret living your life, Bod. I’ve been here for a long time, and I’ll continue being here for as long as you need me.”

“I know,” Bod said and, before he could think better of it, stepped forward into the space remaining between them and kissed him.

Kissing Silas was just as Bod would have expected, had he let himself expect anything at all. His lips were soft and insistent, warmer than they should have been, and the sigh he made when Bod wrapped an arm around his waist and pressed close was full of surprise and relief and fondness. And beneath all that, deeper still, a forgotten sort of hunger.

Bod echoed that hunger with his own, intense in the way that other creatures knew only human emotions could be. He tightened his arm around Silas and slid his tongue into his mouth, careful to avoid his teeth. He wondered, very briefly, if he should have made some sort of grand declaration before doing this; but grand declarations of that sort weren’t really his style and, he realized with a gentle thrill, they weren’t really Silas’s, either. So he kept his arm tight around Silas’s waist and continued kissing him as he started to move backwards, pulling Silas with him towards the bed.

They stopped kissing when the back of Bod’s legs hit the edge of the bed and he fell onto it, landing on his back in a graceless heap, his arms still wrapped around Silas’s waist. Silas fell with him, but somehow managed to make his fall look almost graceful, his legs straddling either side of Bod’s hips like they were meant to be there.

Bod took a deep breath and stared up at him, expression suddenly curious. “You can have sex, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Silas said, reaching between them to unfasten Bod’s trousers. “This would all be a bit rude otherwise.”

“Very,” Bod agreed and reached out to return the favor. 

Undressing had never been a part of sex that Bod had been particularly fond of, viewing it more of a necessity than something to be enjoyed in its own right. But that was one of the few things that Silas didn’t know about Bod—and hadn’t even managed to guess—so he didn’t know not to take his time, eyes lingering on each newly revealed bit of skin.

Bod would have protested, but he found he didn’t hate it, the slow build something novel and new and exciting. Silas touched him finally, fingertips icy as they traced patterns on his skin, and Bod groaned, startled by how loud it sounded in the quiet of the room.

Silas’s face was thoughtful as he trailed his hand downwards, around his navel and down his hip, over his thigh and back upward again. It reminded Bod of the twisting, endless patterns decorating the cup the Sleer kept with them in the barrow. Or a vine reaching for him through the darkness.

“Bod,” Silas whispered, and Bod opened his eyes to stare at him, glad to see nothing but Silas and the blank white of the ceiling above them. 

“Don’t stop,” Bod said, not caring if it sounded cliche because he knew Silas didn’t mind.

Silas nodded and wrapped a hand around him, fingers cold as they stroked him, like he’d been standing outside in the middle of winter with no gloves. Bod half-expected Silas’s cock to feel the same, but instead it was hot against his palm, like it had stolen the heat from the rest of his body. 

He wondered what that heat would feel like inside of him, shivered at the thought, but kept stroking Silas lazily, reluctant to let go of him long enough to find out. He lifted his head for another kiss and pushed his hips up into Silas's hand, promising himself that they'd do that later. 

Next, even. They did, after all, have plenty of time.

Silas seemed to agree, stroking Bod slowly, almost thoughtfully, his hand gradually warming from the friction. By the time Bod came, shivering and half-incoherent, it was almost warm to the touch.

The warmth was still there when Silas came, too, his hand pinning Bod’s to the bed as he slid his cock along Bod’s thigh, spilling himself onto the sheets between them. 

Afterward, Bod twined his fingers through Silas’s and rested their hands against his chest, trapping that heat between them. “So do you think Sir Albert is right about us?”

Silas tightened his hand around Bod’s and stared at him, face thoughtful. “Everything I've heard about him has lead me to believe he's rarely, if ever, wrong.”

“I hope he's not,” Bod said, then frowned suddenly. “He’ll probably be insufferable about it, though.”

“He almost certainly will.” Silas arched one perfect eyebrow. “Even so, I think it might be worth it.”

\--

They were correct on all three counts.

And Sir Albert never let either of them forget it.


End file.
